Marching Forward
by colorguard28
Summary: G doesn't trust easily, much to Sam's frustration. So when things look their worst and G asks Nell for help, Sam worries. Tin Soldiers tag.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: I've written NCIS fic for a couple of years, but this is the first time I've tried my hand at LA. The G/Nell ship has become my guilty pleasure the last couple of weeks, so I figured I'd start there. _

* * *

**Marching Forward**

Nell was still working in the tech section on the main floor when Callen's photo beeped on her phone. A few seconds later, he called her and outlined what he'd found.

_"I've seen this wrist tattoo before, a long time ago. It has to be important. Can you trace it?"_

"I'm already searching." She hesitated, but before she could say anything else, he had disconnected. Nell weighed the trouble she was going to get in when Hetty caught her against the benefit of helping Callen when he'd actually asked, something he never did. She'd picked up on the tension between him and Sam that morning in ops, and it didn't take a genius — or an intelligence analyst — to see that Callen had major trust issues, ones that ran far deeper than anybody else's she'd met. She'd felt guilty earlier just hearing Hetty tell him she hoped he would learn to trust. So when he explained what he wanted, she had to agree. Or so she told herself. He was trusting her to help, and she would. She'd just have to hope Hetty understood.

She sifted through the search results and raised a single eyebrow at the information. Interesting. Nell started digging deeper, though she also kept a watchful eye for Hetty.

**~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~**

Hetty sipped her Formosan tea and kept a watchful eye upon all those in the OSP office. She could see Nell in the workshop corner on this level, and judging by her frequent glances around, Mr. Callen had shanghied the young analyst into his escapades when he had pulled her aside earlier. She sighed and took another sip. As much as she disliked the thought that Mr. Callen might stumble into the hornet's nest she'd been protecting him from for years, the sign that he was willing to trust somebody — especially somebody not named Sam Hanna — was a slight improvement.

Still, if Mr. Callen had enlisted Miss Jones' help, she must be even more alert. Miss Jones had the skills and the intelligence to dig far deeper than Mr. Callen had been able to on his own, and she could draw connections from the thinnest of threads. Even Hetty occasionally was surprised at how much the analyst could glean from just a few details.

She set down her tea cup and slipped out of her office. As she approached Nell's workstation from behind, she could hear the analyst whispering.

"Right, well, maybe I don't have to, but I would prefer to, if that's okay with you. Not that I don't respect your authority, Agent Callen. It's just, I think it would be in my best interest not to get on Hetty's bad side."

Hetty could see the image on Miss Jones' screen and knew she was far too close to making the connections that would endanger Mr. Callen's life beyond anybody's ability to protect him — even his own.

"Too late, dear." She stepped into the workspace where Nell sat, frozen in place. "Now, what have you discovered in your surreptitious snooping?"

As Nell outlined what she had found, Hetty was able to relax a fraction. Nell had not found the missing link, the connection to the Comescu family that would risk Callen's life far more than was appropriate.

"And you felt the need to hide this from me, Miss Jones?" Hetty betrayed not a bit of her internal debate in her face.

"Hetty, I know, but this is Callen. He doesn't ask for help." She hesitated. "I heard you talking to him this morning." She bit her lower lip, and a flush spread across her cheeks. "You want him to learn the art of trusting people. He's trusting me to help. I couldn't-"

Hetty waved a hand to cut her off. She did indeed see, perhaps far clearer than either Mr. Callen or Miss Jones. Mr. Callen, surely, was oblivious to any interest from Miss Jones. He was a lone wolf in all areas of his life, for more so than any of her other agents. Perhaps even more so than Hetty herself. She, at least, had had Cole for the past 20 years. Callen had nobody, and his couple of departures from that had been ill-fated from the start.

Miss Jones, however, seemed to recognize that her own motives were not wholly disinterested. Whether she could keep them from becoming problematic was a question Hetty preferred to reserve for a later moment.

"Miss Jones, I believe we need to join the others in the boatshed." Hetty pointed, and Nell headed for the exit. Hetty didn't bother informing Eric of their departure. He would know soon enough once they arrived at the boatshed. Mr. Callen's hunt was straying far outside OSP's purview, and Hetty did not want to place the team in a position where Director Vance would be forced to take action. Nor, she admitted to herself, did she want Callen to stumble too close to the secrets that could place his life in danger far greater than he could imagine.

**~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~**

Hetty was sipping a hibiscus tea when the agents returned from the shootout at the forum. Callen, Deeks and Kensi all left fairly quickly, but Sam did not. Hetty would have worried, except she could tell that Callen and Sam had managed to find a mutually agreeable position. Still, she would have to check with Eric where they were on tracking Abdul Habaza and locating Sadaat. That time and that place she had promised Sam could not come quickly enough.

She was still musing over that particular operation when Sam entered her office.

"Mr. Hanna." Hetty sipped her tea and waited to hear why Sam was there.

"G and I are good, Hetty." And yet something in Sam's shoulders betrayed a lingering tension to her skilled eye.

"Are you, Mr. Hanna?" She looked at him. "Sam?"

"We went along with him, Hetty. We trusted G." Sam frowned. "But he still wants to go it alone. Even after all these years."

**~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~**

Sam didn't know exactly what he wanted Hetty to say when he walked into her office. Yeah, he and G were good. Mostly. But after all these years, for G to go lone wolf at the first sign of trouble... He said as much to Hetty.

"Mr. Hanna, our Mr. Callen asked for help. Asked Miss Jones for help."

Moments like this were when Sam wished Hetty's poker face wasn't quite so good. "He asked Nell?" Not that Nell wasn't capable, but G hadn't known her half as long as any of the rest of the team.

"She helped him, though she somehow thought she could keep her assistance a secret from me."

Sam had to stifle a smile, even though nothing about this situation was funny. No wonder Nell had been so sheepish at the boathouse earlier. "She knows better now?"

"She does." Hetty paused. "Her rationale, as she explained it to me, made some sense, though she does not know I feel that way." Hetty paused. "You are the closest thing to family that Mr. Callen knows, and he relies upon that for more than he realizes. But we all need more than a single person in our lives. This week has been an example of why. We all have difficult moments, times when we need to lean on those around us for the strength we can't seem to find within ourselves. You and Mr. Callen found yourselves both in need of a friend at a time when each was dealing with significant issues in your personal lives."

Sam nodded. "I have my family. G just has me."

"Precisely, Mr. Hanna. That can strain even the most solid partnership." Hetty folded her hands on the desk in front of her. "Mr. Callen rarely reaches out to others. When he does, I believe encouraging that will help him realize what he only began to notice today — he has the entire team to lean on, if only he will let you all in."

Sam thought about the petite intelligence analyst. "Why Nell?"

Hetty shrugged. "I could offer some conjecture, but it would be just that." She smiled. "I believe Miss Jones is still in ops, though Mr. Beale departed several minutes ago."

Sam recognized an order when he heard one, but this directive was one he didn't disagree with. Time to see what Nell had been thinking earlier today. He knew what Hetty was hinting at, but he still didn't know how he felt about it.


	2. Chapter 2

_**AN: **Forgot the disclaimer yesterday: They aren't mine; I'm just playing in their sandbox. _

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**Chapter 2 **

Sam looked into the ops room and found the analyst sitting at her computer.

"You're here late." He walked over to stand by her desk. "I thought you'd be long gone, like everybody else."

She looked up at him. "I could say the same thing about you, Agent Hanna."

"Sam." He didn't want this to sound at all official. "Hetty's the only one who calls me Agent Hanna, and usually only when I'm in trouble."

She bit her lip, then nodded. "And... Is this a 'Miss Jones, what were you thinking helping G?' discussion? Or are you wandering around after a long day for some other reason?" To her credit, she met his eyes and didn't flinch.

Sam grinned. Girl had guts — Deeks and Eric still wouldn't be able to pull off that kind of question without their eyes going everywhere. "I'm guessing you were thinking that if G was actually willing to let us help bail his sorry ass out of trouble, you should do it." He paused. "At least that's what Hetty suggested."

Nell snickered. "Hetty did not say that." She cocked her head to the side. "Not unless she was impersonating you."

"It's what she meant." Sam shrugged, and his smile faded. "G doesn't trust many people."

"Usually just you." Nell clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, that was a little..."

Sam couldn't help smiling again. "Blunt? Yes. But accurate." He hesitated. He and Hetty could talk about G without really ever talking about him, nothing said that would force either one to say something G would consider an invasion of privacy or a breach of trust. Nell was different, didn't understand G the same way. "G... He never asks for help. Especially if it's personal. And no matter how we spun it today, this was personal."

"Are you upset that he asked me? Or just glad he asked somebody?" Nell arched one eyebrow, and Sam had a flash of what Hetty might have been like as a young woman.

"He trusts you. The last woman he trusted who screwed him over-"

"Is now in prison for trying to sell arms to James Thomas Mason." Nell nodded.

He nodded, but hesitated. "He trusts me. He trusts Hetty. He might trust Agent Gibbs. In the field, he trusts the team."

"I'm not Tracey." Nell let one corner of her mouth quirk up. "I'm not Kristen Donnelly either. Is that what you're asking?"

Her expression was innocent, but Sam had too much experience with Hetty to be fooled. "That part only becomes my business if one of you does something stupid." He watched, but her gaze never faltered. "Although there are some who would argue that getting close to G in any way is the definition of something stupid."

"Thirty-seven families thought he was more trouble than he was worth as a child. People are often wrong." She stood. "Was there anything else?"

"He likes to go lone wolf. The further he gets from the pack, the harder it is for him to come back." Sam watched her slowly nod at his words, and he smiled, convinced she understood. "But he needs to run some — you can't turn a wolf into a Labrador."

"The day G reminds us of Deeks, we should worry. Check." Nell grinned, and Sam couldn't help laughing.

**~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~**

Nell sat in her car outside the OSP office and waited until Sam had pulled out before putting her car in gear. As she turned onto the deserted street, she hesitated. She had thought about going to talk to G tonight, but Sam's last words echoed in her head. Decision made, she turned her car toward home. She knew where G lived — it was part of his file, the part she and Eric could access to help them build a cover. They always tried not to put an agent's legend too close to that agent's actual residence, just to be safe. Nell hadn't joined the team until after Callen bought a house, but Eric had shared a few stories of trying to keep track of G's movements when he was switching places every few days or weeks.

She'd reviewed the old files on Arkady today to get up to speed, and that led her to the ones on Aliana Rostov. The address where Aliana had been living was familiar, and she'd wondered about that house, about what it represented for G. That was part of the reason she wanted to go there. But she forced her car to stay on one of her routes home. She took a few turns in the wrong direction, telling herself she was just covering her trail, a necessary practice for OSP staff. But when she realized she was headed toward G's neighborhood, she turned left at the next light and forced herself to take the most direct route to her apartment.

Sam was right — G didn't trust much, or many. He was never going to see her the way she wanted him to. She was too young, too short — too much cute and not enough beautiful. But she could be a friend, somebody he could turn to in addition to Sam. She just had to let him realize he could trust her.

**~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~**

G lay on his bedroll in the early morning hours, dawn still far from touching the sky. He stared at the chess board on the floor beside him, but his thoughts were on Hetty's final words to him.

_"It doesn't even need roots, but they make it more stable." _

The plant — the epiphyte — was on his mantel next to his box. The last two times he'd gotten up tonight, he'd looked at it as he wandered through the house, his footsteps echoing in the empty rooms. He'd heard about Kensi's comment earlier, her "He's got nothing to steal." She was right. He didn't. He wouldn't miss the chair, the lamps or the end table. He'd be a little off balance if somebody stole his bedroll — he'd carried it since he aged out of the system more than 20 years ago. The chess board was an inexpensive one he'd picked up at a shop in Venice — no value there.

He would miss the box. Or at least what was inside it. Those few fragments of his past, they would all be gone if somebody took the box. He guessed that was what "stuff" was for — things you would miss if they were gone. The reason Sam had a military-grade steel lockbox and Kensi kept a box in the records room. Hetty... Well, her office was filled with what he would consider "stuff." He could only imagine what her various houses looked like inside.

Still, Hetty was the closest of all of them to him. She had the fewest attachments, no family that they knew of. She herself had said Cole was the closest thing she had, and he had been an asset who knew he was an asset.

He wondered about Nell, if she had stuff all over her apartment. He knew she had family — he'd heard her mention them. He'd heard that she knew Nate, which was a puzzle he'd love to solve. She should remind him of Sam, but there was a little too much Hetty in her for him to quite believe that. She had helped him today, even though she knew it would run her afoul of Hetty. G made a note to plead her case before the operations manager tomorrow, when everybody had had a chance to sleep and to think.

Not that he was sleeping, but that wasn't exactly unusual. Getting distracted by Nell, that was the unusual part.

When dawn slowly lit the sky, G was still staring at his chess board, still thinking about Nell.


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: There's a gap in canon between Tin Soldiers and Empty Quiver, so that's where this happens. _

**Chapter 3**

G frowned as he shaved his stubble before the sun had finished rising. Without it, he looked several years younger, not nearly as battered as he was in reality. But CHP officers were clean-cut, even if they were taking kickbacks from dirtbags to be a "taxi service." He and Sam needed to make this case a priority, figure out what the Pendleton connection was.

He texted Sam that he'd meet him at the office, then headed in. G was the first one into the operations center. He didn't have much time before he had to meet Sam, and he needed to talk to Hetty first.

She wasn't at her desk, so he went over to the coffee space, where he found her pouring water into her flowered teapot.

"Mr. Callen." She didn't turn away from her morning ritual. "You don't usually precede Mr. Hanna into the office."

"Nell was just doing what I asked her to yesterday, Hetty. You can't punish her for that. I'm as much her boss as you are."

Hetty set the teapot down and turned to face him, her dark eyes looking up at him. "Quite the contrary, Mr. Callen. On both counts. I do not intend to, as you put it, punish Miss Jones for her actions yesterday. A member of this team needed help and she provided it, as is her responsibility."

G felt the tension in his shoulders ease a bit at Hetty's words. "Wait, you said on both counts." He narrowed his gaze, tried to read her face.

"You are not Miss Jones' supervisor, I am. I do her annual performance evaluation. You are a coworker, and one who has occasion to request her assistance from time to time. But neither I nor NCIS consider you her supervisor." She looked up at him without blinking.

G knew Hetty — there was definitely another meaning there. This was Hetty — there were probably six or seven other meanings in there. She was many things, but straightforward was rarely a word he'd use to describe her.

"So...?" He hoped she'd finish his sentence for him.

She smiled and turned back to the counter, setting everything on her tea tray and lifting it down. The operations manager turned to face him, moving smoothly enough that the china didn't even rattle on the tray. "I meant what I said yesterday, Mr. Callen, about my one wish for you. Far be it from me to stand in the way of your first steps in that direction."

As she walked away, her pace careful, G stared after her. He wanted to demand answers, but Hetty wouldn't give them. And if he didn't get moving, Sam would demand them from him and he wasn't sure he knew what to tell the big guy.

He pulled his bag from the locker and headed into the locker room to change. As he walked out, boots and uniform still not quite familiar, he was in the space between him and his legend, the brief moments each day he felt like no skin quite fit him. He was just getting into mindset of the corrupt highway patrol officer he'd been playing for six months when he saw Nell walk into the gym, her bag slung across her body. She smiled at him and suddenly he was back to being G again. They exchanged greetings and he forced himself to head over to the armory where he was meeting Sam.

As he walked, he thought back about what Hetty had said.

"That little-" He cut himself off before she could catch him.

"G?" Sam looked up from where he was cleaning his gun.

"Nothing."

"Yeah?" He caught G's gaze, and G couldn't look away.

"Just something Hetty said." G rolled his eyes.

"She's a smart lady." Sam grinned.

"Yeah, and she knows that too well." G checked to make sure his fake badge was in place and his uniform was ready to go. "Sorry about yesterday."

"We got it taken care of, G." Sam looked down at his gun as he wiped it down. "I'm glad Nell had your back."

"Yeah. She... Yeah." G wasn't going to go there, not yet. He was going to make sure this was straight in his head first because even if Hetty was right that it wasn't against regs, it was a step he didn't want to take unless he was sure. Maybe after they got this case finished.


End file.
